High-quality
black opal can cost
over
$10,000 per carat,
making
it one of the world's most expensive gemstones. But mining black opal isn't
easy.
After
investing tens of thousands of dollars, a miner might not find a single gem.
So,
what makes black opal so hard to find? And why is it so expensive?
Black
opal is one of the most enchanting stones in the world, sought after
for
its seemingly infinite display of colors.
Compared
to common opal, which is usually one color, black opal exhibits many different
colors
contrasted
by a dark body tone. It's simply the most stunning gemstone on the planet.
It's just remarkably beautiful.
You
can put the thing away for a week, pick it out and look at it,
and
you can still see things inside it
that
you've never, ever seen before. Opal is
found in several parts of the world,
including
Ethiopia, Brazil, and Mexico.
But
over 90% of the world's opal comes from Australia. And a lot of the black opal
is
found here, at Lightning Ridge.
It's
located on the edge of the Outback,
with
a population of just over 2,000 people. Miners have been searching for opal
here for over 100 years.
But
even for experts, finding black opal isn't easy.
Frederick:
If you were to start mining tomorrow,
and
once you learn mining skills -- and I've been mining for 40 years --
we'd
be an equal chance, just because there's nothing really that can tell you,
"Oh,
there is opal in that piece of ground" or "There's not opal in that
piece of ground."
Miners
start by drilling a vertical shaft
in
an area that they think contains opal. Then they must clear out an underground
room
large
enough to start digging at the rock.
Frederick:
The basic idea of mining is basically extract the opal clay out from the
ground,
put
it onto a truck, I take the truck to a puddling site in town,
and
check if there's opal in that. The equipment needed to mine
and
the cost to register your claim
can
be extremely expensive.
Really,
if you wanted to rock up here
and
be serious, it'd probably ... need $150,000 to $100,000 in your pocket to have
a go.
But buying the equipment doesn't guarantee
that
miners will find black opal. Frederick: Some people will go,
"Oh,
there's definitely money there,
because
next door they got $200,000 and there was a bit of color drilled up here.
It's
got to have come over."
And
there's a whole epic story
of
why there should be opal there,
and
you go and dig there, and it's not. Miners search for areas in the rock
with trace amounts of opal.
They
follow these spots, called "nobbies,"
hoping
to find more opal deeper in the rock.
Frederick:
You'll keep going in a straight line till the trace runs out,
and
then come back where there was trace in the wall,
go
left and right, and then if that stops,
then
you come back and do it again.
And
you can come back and do it again. So you've always got that in the back of
your head,
you
know, "When do I leave, how long do I stay,
have
I stayed too long? I'm wasting time, I'm wasting money for my next patch."
There's
a nobby there.
When
you're in a really good pocket,
see
how these nobbies are sitting close like that together?
They
can be like a cluster, like a bunch of grapes.
They're
all sitting around each other, and they've all got color. Hear that? See that
sound? It's like glass.
So,
you get that big one out, there we go. Doesn't have any value. Common black
opal. Opal is formed when silica-rich groundwater hardens in rock over millions
of years.
Large
silica spheres within the stone diffract light, creating vibrant colors.
That
play of color makes each gem unique. But for miners like Frederick, digging for
black opal is a gamble.
Frederick:
The human factor is the biggest factor
in
finding opal. If you've got a piggy bank of $10,000 or $20,000
and
then all of a sudden in one month or two months you've blown all of that budget
because
you've had breakdowns and you've had things occur that you didn't think of,
and
then you go, "Well, I'm $20,000 down.
What
do I do here?"
I've
been full-time mining for about over 45 years, and quite often I say to myself,
"How
did you do it? How did you survive that long making it your only job?"
I've
done ... I've done good. Not great. I haven't been in the millions.
I
haven't been up there in the fantasy pocket, you know? Once rough opal is
extracted
and
processed from the dirt, it has to be cut and polished. This is when the real
value of the gem is determined.
Jo
Lindsay: A black opal can vary from ...
starting
at maybe $1,000 a carat for run of your mill
and
going right up to tens of thousands of dollars
for
that really exquisite top quality. The main stone is 241 carats.
A
few thousand dollars a carat wouldn't be unreasonable.
A
lot of money. [laughs]
The
color, brightness, and patterns can all influence the price of black opal.
Jo:
What you're looking for in the best-quality opal
is
a black stone with really bright color
and
as much red and other colors as possible. So, the most valuable black opal of
all
is
a really bright red stone
on
a very black base that just glows.
And
you don't see them very often at all.
That
lack of supply is a huge driver for the price of black opal.
We
can barely keep up with the demand at the moment.
As
soon as you find a gem-quality stone,
you
know you've got a buyer for it.
